Abstract:

On-road commercial trucks and buses are among the fastest-growing transportation sectors worldwide, and many nations and regions have developed programs and policies to improve the environmental performance of their heavy-duty vehicle (HDV) fleets. India’s initial regulation for HDVs greater than 12 tonnes, currently in effect, requires that vehicles be evaluated on a test track while operating at constant speeds. There has been considerable interest in exploring the feasibility of using the Vehicle Energy Consumption Calculation Tool (VECTO) developed by the European Commission. The government of India has created a technical committee to guide the development of a VECTO-based certification process. The vision is for manufacturers to be able to use an India-specific version of VECTO to determine the fuel consumption and CO2 levels that will be used for evaluating compliance with efficiency standards. Based on India’s interest in using VECTO, the ICCT undertook a project to develop a proof-of-concept (PoC) adaptation of the VECTO model that represents vehicles and operating conditions in India. The primary motivation behind the development a PoC VECTO-India model is to assess the level of resources needed to adapt the software for use in another country. The scope of this project was to reparametrize VECTO for the Indian context by modifying the datasets relevant for VECTO’s declaration mode—i.e., data about vehicle segments, payloads, generic component data, and test cycles.